October 28, 2006

"Bill Clinton, who had just shaken dozens of hands at a tavern in Boston, was handed a pie but no fork on his way to the car. The ravenous Mr. Clinton promptly devoured it using his unwashed hand. He eventually became a serious user of hand wipes and lotions at the urging of his doctor, an aide said."

Mmm... pie!

That's from an article in today's NYT about how all the politicians use Purell. I checked to see if Barack Obama was mentioned. Answer: yes:

“Good stuff, keeps you from getting colds,” Mr. Bush raved about hand sanitizer to Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, at a White House encounter early last year.

Mr. Obama, who recounts the episode in his new book, says that after rubbing a blob of it on his own hands, the president offered him some, which he accepted (“not wanting to appear unhygienic.”)

Mr. Obama has since started carrying Purell in his traveling bag, a spokesman said.

Why did I check? Because it was quite recently that the NYT published a review of Obama's book that I thought wafted the suggestion that Bush was a racist for using Purell after shaking Obama's hand.

One reason I follow politics is because it is important, as opposed to the general cream puffiness that pervades most of society. In other words, politicians are more interesting to me than celebrities.

So what are we doing with politics? We are talking about pie eating and hand sanitizer, as a tabloid might about celebrities.

Come on, if I meet a politician I want to know what (s)he thinks about the Iraq, the budget deficit, global warming, abortion... you know all those big encompassing things. How (s)he eats pies or washes hands is UNIMPORTANT.

Also, the subject of this post does bring up an interesting scenario. Someday will some really dirty politician get a bunch of campaign workers to vote early, then intentially catch the flu and go around before election day in areas where the other party is strong and shake as many hads as they can?

I know this sounds paranoid, but other than the vector it is what Baghwan Sree Rajnish tried to do when he tried to give a whole town water borne illness on election day (though he forgot that most people drink bottled water or other things entirely like pop, milk or juice anymore.)